Draft
Draft

Being assessed, being processed

Life-sentenced prisoners’ experiences of parole decision-making

Working paper presented in July 2025, describing a qualitative analysis of life-sentenced prisoners’ experiences navigating parole decision-making processes.

presentation
conference paper
Authors
Affiliations
Published

2025-07-03

Abstract

This paper draws on qualitative data from interviews with men serving life sentences for murder to explore their experiences of parole decision-making processes. Whilst research on parole decisions has historically focused on the oral hearing as a discrete event, this paper offers a preliminary investigation into how prisoners perceive and navigate the broader administrative processes that shape parole outcomes.

Keywords

parole, decision-making, life sentences, risk assessment, back-door sentencing, time, performativity

Introduction

Bridging past and future research

Past project (PhD): How men serving life sentences for murder respond morally to conviction and punishment (Jarman 2024)

  • 48 interviews across two English prisons (2019-2020)
  • 26 participants approaching or past tariff dates
  • Focus on institutional demands for risk reduction

Today’s focus: Participants’ experiences of parole decision-making

Explain the bridging purpose - this is preliminary analysis while developing new research.

Defining ‘parole decision-making’

I’m using the term broadly, to encompass:

  • Not just oral hearings
  • The wider apparatus of sentence planning
  • Risk assessment processes
  • Dossier compilation
  • How participants themselves saw it: a process, not an event

Participants didn’t always differentiate clearly between Prison Service and Parole Board roles.

Research context and motivation

Existing research
Key questions

We know that prison staff work shapes decisions, but not much about how they:

  • Interpret evidence
  • Understand risk
  • Prioritise competing considerations

We don’t know much about decisions made ‘on the papers’ (though see Power 2018)

Today’s contribution

Three themes from 26 interviews:

  1. Temporal disruption
  2. Procedural expectations
  3. Performativity

Discussion of how these shape forthcoming work

Empirical themes

Temporal disruption: the parole process and lived time

For most of the sentence…
  • Biographically insignificant spells of monotony
    • ‘Dead’ or ‘nothing’ time
    • ‘Stagnation’
  • Limited behavioural feedback
After the parole process kicks in…
  • Biography comes ‘unstuck’:
    • Sediments of the past are stirred up
    • The future becomes realer, more appealing, and just beyond reach
    • Parole cycles generate urgency
    • Casework generates delays
He told me: “We forgot you. You’ve gone through the system and you’ve been forgotten. That’s why your report wasn’t written”.
— Billy
[I hate how] they are so blasé about it […] I’ve done so much […] to better myself, to get myself in a good position. [OMU staff] turn around and say to me, “Oh, well, I don’t really know what you’ve been up to.”
— Ebo
[I just want to] get it over and done with because […] it is late by 13 months. I just want to know […] All this time [since the last assessment] is limbo.
— Tom
I’m going to get to the stage where [I say] ‘That’s YOUR parole board. I’m not even engaging. Just leave me alone.’ […] They keep dangling the carrot, and just as I get to the carrot, they hit me with a fucking stick.
— Fred

Procedural expectations: risk assessment vs. moral evaluation

What did participants expect from the process?
  • Descriptions of personal change were perceived as necessary
  • Terminologies varied: risk-focused vs. holistic
  • Late-stage prisoners described change in terms of character (Sennett 1998):
    • Reflective
    • Relating to the long-term
    • Concerning the emotional priority given to different considerations
I’ve got my empathy back. I mean, [now] I can stop and help somebody, if they need help, not just sort of walk off and say, ‘That’s not my problem, that’s not my business.’ It IS my business.
— Daniel
I didn’t know then that I could be kind to people, you know?
— Jeff
I mean, my beliefs are still the same. I haven’t changed my beliefs. The only thing I will not do in the future is inflict my beliefs on somebody else
— Grant
They were so intent on the fact that [I’ve been prescribed codeine] for pain […] They spent maybe even half an hour talking about it, which is [more than] they talked about the crime I committed.
— Frank
What the Parole Board did say, was, we don’t focus on the positives, because they’re a given. We’re here to focus on the negatives.
— Frank
I understand the reasons why […] Their job is to protect the public […] If I got into a relationship, of course there’s a bloody increased risk. But it’s not what I want.
— Grant
What I’ve gained [in prison] is healing from trauma. I understand that there is that risk. But I still believe that everybody should be treated as an individual because each individual case is completely different.
— Nicholas

Performativity: self-presentation and psychological integrity

What is the performative challenge?
  • Parole processes require a performance, BUT performances can be:
    • convincing/unconvincing
    • fluent/awkward
    • truthful/deceptive
    • authentic/manipulative
    • plausible/fanciful
  • Whether they succeed depends partly on the audience
90% of us in this jail tell [parole boards] what they want to know.
— Taylor

Performative styles:

  • Defensive minimalism: “yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir” (Alf)
  • Calculated compliance: engage “because I had to”, self-disclosure on a “need-to-know basis” (Nixon)
  • Full disclosure: “you just lay your soul bare” (Daniel) but risk your own wellbeing
  • Narrative negotiation: carving out space for personal narratives
Narrative negotiation

‘Taking responsibility’—but not for the murder

[I told them] I’m not proud of the way I was […] In relation to the affairs. I can openly that. I said, ‘No-one deserves that, I wouldn’t want that for my daughters.’ It’s a matter then of just having empathy to the […] hurt and the pain you’ve caused.
— Ian
Defensive disengagement

When performance fails to please the audience…

Chris was asked about the possibility of encountering his co-defendant after release. Pressed repeatedly, he eventually snapped.

‘What if you meet him?’ […] ‘What if you can’t avoid him?’ […] ‘What if he follows you?’ […] ‘What if he won’t go away?’ […] ‘What if the police don’t come?’ ‘Well then, I’ll fucking kill him!’ It took half an hour, that did. That’s the answer he wanted.
— Chris
It’s like having a pair of scales, yeah? And they’ve got a big weight already fucking tilting the scales on one side that says ‘public protection’.
— Fred
It’s the hope that kills you.
— Derek

Future directions?

The proposed research

Core approach
  • Examine the decision as a socially situated sentencing process (see Tata 2020) involving many mutually constraining contributors
  • Not the product of a single discretionary hearing
Mixed-methods design: Quantitative component
  • Sample recent cases from specific prison sites
  • Code a dataset from Parole Board documents (adapting methodology in Dyke 2022)
    • Decision letters
    • Case management directions
    • Dossier contents summaries
  • Analyse associations among data points and outcomes
Mixed-methods design: Qualitative component
  • Working title: “An ethnography of the parole dossier”
  • Sample 25-30 cases at the same sites and follow them longitudinally & in depth
  • Try to triangulate:
    • Staff and prisoner interviews
    • Observations
    • Document analysis
Current status
  • Ethics clearance received
  • Applications submitted to Parole Board and HMPPS
  • Collisions with reality ongoing!
  • Early findings in 2026 🤞🤞🤞
Questions

I’d love to hear your feedback, and thoughts about where this might/could/should lead!

Thank you - open for questions and discussion. Particularly interested in resonances with panel colleagues’ work and broader questions about institutional decision-making.

References

References

Bradford, S., & Cowell, P. (2012). The decision-making process at parole reviews (indeterminate imprisonment for public protection sentences) (Research {{Summary}} No. 1/12), London: Ministry of Justice / Parole Board.
Dagan, N. (2024). Parole as a boxing match: Lifers, prosecution, and the adversarial making of parole hearings. Punishment & Society-International Journal of Penology, 26(2), 223–242, Article.
Dyke, C. (2022, April). How do parole board members in England and Wales decide whether to release men who have perpetrated domestic violence against women? (PhD thesis), UCL (University College London).
Dyke, C., Schucan Bird, K., & Rivas, C. (2020). How do parole board members in England and Wales construct decisions about whether to release perpetrators of intimate partner violence from prison? Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 30(6), 350–362.
Finnis, J. (2017, September). A formidable document of failure? The role of the parole dossier in the decision-making process ({{MSc}}), Birkbeck, University of London, London.
Hawkins, K. (1983). Assessing evil: Decision behavior and parole board justice. British Journal of Criminology, 23(2), 101–127, Article.
Hood, R., & Shute, S. (2000). The parole system at work: A study of risk based decision-making, London: Home Office.
Jarman, B. (2024, June). Moral messages, ethical responses: Punishment and self-governance among men serving life sentences for murder (PhD thesis), Apollo - University of Cambridge repository.
Padfield, N. (2017). Parole Board Oral Hearings 2016-2017 - Exploring the Barriers to Release: Stage Two of an Exploratory Study ({{SSRN Scholarly Paper}} No. ID 3081039), Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network.
Padfield, N., & Liebling, A. (2000). An exploration of decision-making at discretionary lifer panels (Home {{Office Research Study}} No. 213), London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.
Peplow, D., & Phillips, J. (2024). Communication repair in parole oral hearings: Comparing remote and in-person settings. Journal Of Criminology, 57(3, SI), 352–371, Article.
Power, S. (2018). To release or not to release? A study of Parole Board decision-making at paper hearings for recalled determinate sentence prisoners. Prison Service Journal, (237), 26–31.
Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism, New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Shammas, V. L. (2019). The Perils of Parole Hearings: California Lifers, Performative Disadvantage, and the Ideology of Insight. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 42(1), 142–160.
Sparks, R. (2020). Crime and justice research: The current landscape and future possibilities. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 20(4), 471–482.
Tata, C. (2020). Sentencing: A Social Process: Re-thinking Research and Policy, Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-01060-7
The Parole Board. (2024). Annual report & accounts 2023/24, London: HMSO.

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